But it wasn’t easy. Here are five obstacles Keselowski had to overcome in the past two years to win the 2012 title.

Crew chief change

After his first season in Sprint Cup, Keselowski had done little to show he would be a force in the Cup series.

While on his way to claiming the 2010 Nationwide Series title, Keselowski mustered just two top-10s on his way to a 25th-place finish in the Cup standings. This wasn’t just a matter of bad luck. Keselowski was not running well at all while teammate Kurt Busch posted nine top-fives and 17 top-10s.

Penske Racing dumped crew chief Jay Guy after just one season with Keselowski and promoted Paul Wolfe, who had guided Keselowski to the Nationwide title.

While he had success in Nationwide, Wolfe had no experience working on Cup cars. He had no experience calling a Cup race, where tires are unlimited and there are twice as many cars capable of winning a race than in Nationwide.

But it only took Wolfe and Keselowski 13 races before they won a race and it took less than a season for them to show they could compete consistently at the Cup level.

“Paul Wolfe was a great operator from the standpoint of getting Brad where he needed to be, pulling this team together,” team owner Roger Penske said. “He's been amazing.”

Wolfe said the key was getting the right tools from the Penske organization.

“I'm thankful for the opportunity that RP has given me and Brad,” Wolfe said. “There's been plenty of lists we've passed his way of things we wanted, and it was our job when we got those things to go out there and perform, and I feel like for the most part we've tried to do that.

“Over the last three years we've been able to accomplish a lot of great things.”

How did they do it?

“I'm kind of the guy that takes it one day at a time and try to be better each and every day at what I do, and never really looked at it from the standpoint of I want to go win a championship with him,” Wolfe said.

“It was I want to go win races and continue to grow as a team. We've done that each and every week and every year, and now we're rewarded with a Cup championship.”

The injury

Wolfe and Keselowski began to perform well on a consistent basis right after Keselowski nearly saw his 2011 season end with a crash while testing at Road Atlanta in August.

The crash left Keselowski with a broken ankle and doubts about whether he could race in the upcoming race at Pocono Raceway. Keselowski didn’t just race in that event, he won.

The injury became a chip on Keselowski’s shoulder. He hates being told he can’t do something, and many doubted his ability to perform while nursing such an injury.

“It left a big mark on my ankle, I can tell you that,” Keselowski quipped. “It's still there, but it left a mark on my team, and that's probably most important, because now that moment showed, I think, a level of toughness that my guys appreciated because I knew they had it all along, but maybe there was some questions in their eyes.”

Keselowski said he doesn’t believe the injury was the catalyst for improved performance but he doesn’t have proof that it wasn’t. He followed the win at Pocono with a second-place finish at Watkins Glen, a third at Michigan and then another victory at Bristol. His late-summer surge earned him a wild card into the Chase, where he finished fifth in his first playoff appearance.

“I felt like as a team we had already started turning the corner, and it was a little bit of a culmination of those events where the cars were getting faster and we were building and getting stronger,” Keselowski said.

“The accident just kind of happened in that time period. But maybe not. There's no way to ever know.”

Fuel injection

When NASCAR switched to electronic fuel injection, it likely was going to cause some hiccups.

That was true for Keselowski and Penske Racing. In two races early in the 2012 season, he suffered fuel pickup problems.

It apparently came from a new lubricant that the team had decided to use in conjunction with the new EFI system. Somehow, the team was finding pellets in its fuel tanks.

“We had technology we thought would give us an advantage,” Penske said. “Obviously it gave us a disadvantage. … Dodge and Penske engines really pulled that through for us.”

The team, though, overcame those issues by the end of April. And more importantly, it figured out how to stretch its fuel mileage better than most teams during the summer and early fall, which led to Keselowski’s victories at Chicagoland and Dover during the Chase.

“As the middle of the season and the spring came through, we had them fuel issues, we rallied deep, found a way through them, and when the summer stretch came, we didn't have the speed we wanted through the summer,” Keselowski said.

“But what we did have was execution that was incredible, and I knew it right away. … Once we won Chicago, I felt like we could do it.”

Lame-duck Dodge

Penske Racing announced March 1 that it would move from Dodge to Ford starting in 2013. The announcement, made so early, caught many by surprise.

Dodge, which had been with Penske since 2003, couldn’t offer a long-term deal, and Penske was able to get a five-year deal with Ford.

Penske had done much of the development on Dodge’s 2013 car and also had the lone Dodge engine program.

Unable to find a strong engine builder to couple with a team it believed could be competitive right away, Dodge announced in August that it would leave the sport.

Despite the pending departure, Penske and Dodge continued to work together despite the manufacturer’s pending departure. And perhaps more remarkably, Penske was the lone Dodge team.

“The support they've given us over this last 12 months has been doubled up,” Penske said. “When you make a move like we had to, they had to know, we had to know that this change was going to be made.

“But I would say it (was) all hands on deck.”

What could have been an awkward situation never really became all that awkward.

“It's been a great ride, and I'm very fortunate to be a part of it,” Keselowski said. “Hopefully, they'll find their way back into NASCAR very soon, and I'm sure when they do so, they'll be very competitive, as they were to end this season.

“I appreciate all the support along the way and making it possible.”

New teammates

It’s safe to say that when Keselowski began driving for Penske in 2010, he didn’t think he’d be looked at as the veteran leader of the Penske stable. That role belonged to former Cup champion Kurt Busch.

But Busch self-destructed and worked his way out of a ride with Penske as he got into flare-ups with the media and also disagreed with the direction the company was taking.

Replacing Busch after the 2011 season was AJ Allmendinger, a successful open-wheel racer still trying to find his way in NASCAR. He was beginning to get there when he was suspended for failing a NASCAR drug test in June.

Sam Hornish Jr. replaced Allmendinger for the remainder of the season, and the team has hired Joey Logano to take over the ride full time in 2013.

Amid all the changes, Keselowski has become the organization’s leader.

“I said to him, ‘You're going to be the leader of this team,’” Penske said. “And I think that you've seen what's happened. He hasn't missed a step. He's galvanized the team from the standpoint of leadership with Paul and the whole team, and I think never does he miss a day coming in the shop, putting his arm around the guys, and that makes a big difference.”

Having grown up in a racing family, Keselowski knew what it meant to be a leader and proving to his team he would not let them down.

“You can be a big shot,” Penske said. “But you've got to get down on the ground and work with the guys that are doing all this work day in and day out.”

Keselowski didn’t show it just by being in the shop. He did it first thing during the championship celebration after he got out of his car at Homestead.

Asked what meant the most to him, Keselowski said, “Just how far we've come, Penske Racing — this team is phenomenal, and I'm just so fortunate to have them.”